Sewage utilisation / edited by James Forrest.

Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sewage utilisation / edited by James Forrest. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Med K23949 illu iinstitution of civil engineers. Sect. I.—MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS. March 28, 1876. GEORGE ROBERT STEPHENSON, President, in the Chair. No. 1,474.—“Sewage Interception Systems, or Dry-Sewage Pro- cesses.” By Gilbert Richard Redgrave, Assoc. Inst. C.E.1 “ It has long been amongst the most fixed of the certainties which have relation to civilised life, that, wherever human population resides, the population cannot possibly he healthy, cannot possibly escape recurrent pestilential diseases, unless the inhabited area be made subject to such skilled arrangements as shall keep it habitu- ally free from the excrements of the population.” 2 The Author feels that, in basing his observations upon the above quotation from the writings of an able exponent of sanitary science, he cannot too early express the obligations he is under to the medical officers of the Local Government Board for much of the information which he now brings forward. In the Reports of Dr. Buchanan and Mr. J. Netten Radcliffe in 1869, and in the subse- quent Report of Mr. Radcliffe in 1874, together with Mr. Simon’s Report on “ Filth Diseases,” dated July 1874, will be found nearly all the facts needed for the thorough investigation of the subject; and it is from the above sources that the following information has mainly been derived. For the continuous and rapid removal of the excreta from populous districts, there can be no two opinions concerning the advantages to be derived from the use of water as a carrier. A theoretically perfect system of sewage removal would probably be one where a large volume of rapidly-flowing water, passing through the town in impervious open culverts, received from points situated immediately above it, the dejections, liquid and solid, of the entire population, and carried them at once into large rivers, not used for drinking purposes, or direct into the sea. 1 The discussion upon this Paper was taken in conjunction with the succeeding one, and occupied portions of three evenings. • T tile Twelfth Report of the Medical Officer of the Piivy Council, p. 17 (1869 . B 2